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WASHINGTON/DEARBORN, Mich. (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co abruptly named James Hackett as chief executive on Monday, responding to investors' growing unease about the U.S. automaker's slumping stock price and its ability to counter threats from longtime rivals and Silicon Valley.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Monday it will impose hefty penalties on sugar imports after lobbying by domestic mills, but experts said the ruling may not go far enough to stem the flow of lower-priced sweetener into the world's top importer.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge by several major corporations to a Michigan law that retroactively changed the way businesses are taxed in the state, leading to $1 billion extra for government coffers.

(Reuters) - General Electric Co said on Monday that the European Union's competition watchdog is investigating whether the industrial conglomerate provided misleading information during a merger review.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice and Citigroup Inc said on Monday that they have settled a criminal investigation into violations of anti-money laundering rules and the Bank Secrecy Act at the bank's Banamex USA unit.

As Bloomberg notes, the S&P 500 climbed for the third consecutive session as President Donald Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia netted deals that lifted defense shares. The euro remains firm having pared gains from Chancellor Angela Merkel's comment referring to the single currency as "too weak." The 10-year Treasury yield climbed above 2.25% while gold rose and crude climbed to the highest in a month as Saudi Arabia said all producers agree on extending output cuts. Brazil's real trimmed losses after the top court suspended its ruling on President Temer, while Mexico's peso gained as interest rate differentials temporarily overshadow NAFTA concerns.

NO VOLUME!!

While stocks are up 3 days in a row, they remain below the Trump-Dump levels... NOTE - each of the daily bounces have been opening gaps with little follow-through...

And "Most Shorted" stocks are now back unchanged from the Trump Dump...

While Michael Flynn may refusing to comply with the Senate Intel Committee's probe of Russian interference, two other former associates of Donald Trump complied on Monday afternoon, and according to NBC, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone have turned over documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee in its Russia investigation, providing "all documents consistent with their specific request." As reported previously, the committee sent document requests to Manafort and Stone, as well as Carter Page and Mike Flynn, seeking information related to dealings with Russia. So far Page has not yet complied, while Flynn it was confirmed today, planned to plead the Fifth as a reason not to comply with a committee subpoena, citing "escalating public frenzy" as part of the ongoing probe.

According to NBC, the committee's letter to Page asked him "to list any Russian official or business executive he met with between June 16, 2015 and Jan. 20, 2017. It also asked him to provide information about Russia-related real estate transactions during that period. And it seeks all his email or other communications during that period with Russians, or with the Trump campaign about Russia or Russians."

While the precise contents is unknown, similar letters were sent to Manafort and Stone, who then sent the requested information to investigators by last Friday's deadline.

"I gave them all documents that were consistent with their specific request," Stone said in an email to NBC News.

A spokesman for Manafort, Jason Maloni, confirmed that Manafort turned over documents, adding that Manafort remains interested in cooperating with the Senate investigation.

Personally, I enjoy watching Sean Spicer spar with the press. It's good entertainment. But press briefings don't make sense in 2017. And they certainly don't make sense for a Trump presidency. I'll tell you why.

The role of press briefings is to create two complementary illusions.

The first illusion is that the administration is providing new and useful information. That rarely happens. And when it does, it could have been done more easily in the form of a press release in response to a written inquiry. A written response can be faster than a press briefing because it doesn't depend on a scheduled meeting time in the future.

The second illusion created by the press briefings is that "news" is being manufactured in that room. The reality is that artisanal "gotcha" moments are lovingly crafted by the press. That means the so-called news from press briefings is generally fake news, and that would be true no matter the administration in power.

It can be super-expensive for a news organization to do investigative journalism. It might take months to do the research and it can result in no story at all. But the gotcha questions at a press briefing are cheap, and they are the incubators of fake news that feed the media machine. That's good for the press, but the public doesn't need any of that, except for entert ...

That SocGen's Andrew Lapthorne has long held a cynical view of the stock market's relentless grind higher, similar to that of his colleague Albert Edwards, is not a secret: he made as much clear in the first sentence of his latest note to client "time to sell equities to buy bonds?" in which he said that "to the apparent surprise of many, last week the S&P 500 actually fell, losing 1.82% on Wednesday alone, the worst daily return since September last year. That such a song and dance was made about it was probably more a function of the subdued nature of equity markets recently than the actual performance impact itself - after all the S&P 500 ended the week only down 0.4%."

Still, with Lapthorne, and SocGen's clients forced to trade the market in front of them, and not the market they wish they had, the strategist went on to propose a pair trade, which in a market engulfed by passive investing money-flow "noise", actually makes sense - a derivative of the familiar "sell in May" trader mantra, which while applicable to stocks, is just the opposite of what one finds when looking at seasonal patterns involving Treasuries.

According to Lapthorne, "with summer fast approaching in the UK (we know this as our office air conditioning has broken down), we discussed seasonality last week with an ex-colleague and now client. There is a wealth of interesting research out there discussing and documenting seasonal trends and market moods. Sandrine Ungari on the SG Cross Asset Quant team pointed us to a paper inferring that SAD financial analysts could be at fault, and of course as is commonplace these days you can even buy a whole host of ETF's based around seasonal trading."

He may be pessimistic when it comes to the perilous state of financial markets, but Nassim Taleb, hedge-fund adviser and noted author of "The Black Swan," says he's quite optimistic about the future overall.

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